Of Blame and Punishment
by i am a bee
Summary: Why Justin lets Ethan top him.


I can't put my finger on the exact moment that I fell in love with him. I just felt drawn to him in a way that I didn't know you could be drawn to another person. Even though I'd never been with anyone else, I knew right from the start that what I felt for him, what we had together was _it._ The kind of love that they write about, the kind of love that is transcendental of life, time, and all circumstance. _The kind of love that lasts forever._

I know that a lot of people probably don't understand why I stayed with him as long as I did. In three years, he never once told me that he loved me—he didn't need to.

I knew that he loved me. Even though he didn't say it, even though he pretended not to, it saturated every move he made. It was there in every casual brush of his arms, in the way that he'd lace his fingers through mine when we made love, when we fucked...the way that his eyes would find me and for that one glorious moment when he'd inadvertently expose himself as he came. His hands fisting in my hair, how he began to curve his body around mine afterwards in sleep even though he claimed to hate that "touchy feely crap" more than anyone else. The way that we became one of those couples that everyone loves to hate—and no one more so than Brian—the ones whose joy is so radiant and undiluted that it makes it physically painful for other people to be around because in its presence they can see nothing but the shortcomings of their own tragic realities.

Even though he _refused_ to say it, everything he has ever done has said it to me, over and over again.

I didn't mean to break the rules. But even though I told myself that it was enough, I was never satisfied. What I wanted more than anything else was for Brian to say it, out loud, how he felt about me. Knowing it wasn't enough. It wasn't something that I was about to complacently take for granted. And when I realised that Ethan could be who I so desperately wanted Brian to be, even though what Ethan was wasn't Brian, I was able to convince myself that the parts of Ethan that I wanted were enough to make the other parts insignificant or at least matter a little bit less. But afterwards, when I realised exactly what it was that I'd done, I hated myself for doing it and I blamed him for making me do it in the first place. Things could have been so different. Had he given me what I wanted, Ethan never would have happened. I blamed him...and I wanted to punish him.

I wanted Brian to find out about Ethan. I wanted him to stop being so fucking blasé about everything. I wanted his jealousy to blind him to the point where he could see nothing else but me and consume him until he'd have no choice but to tell me how he really felt. I wanted him to fight for me. When he found out about Ethan and then did nothing, _told_ me that it was up to me, like our rules had meant nothing to him...

He made up my mind for me. What I did was conscious, it was deliberate. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted to prove to myself that, if it meant nothing to him, it didn't mean a thing to me, either...which is why I decided that I would let Ethan fuck me.

Brian and I fucked tons of people during the time that we were together. We could do whoever we wanted, we could be sucked off whenever we wanted, and he loved to watch me do both of these things. If I was fucking other people and being just as promiscuous as he'd always been, it allowed him to prove to me that he was upholding his end of the bargain. He was teaching me to be the best homosexual that I could be. It went without saying, however, and what I always found curious was, that whenever it came down to it, whenever someone tried to take his place, he wouldn't let them and, much as I tried to convinced myself of otherwise, I was always secretly relieved when he stopped them. He was the only one who was allowed to fuck me.

I know that to a certain extent sex is just sex. But with Brian and me, as much as it was about _sex_, it was about something more than that, too. The act of allowing someone to physically penetrate your body, of taking them inside for the first time, is about trust and it's about giving them a piece of yourself, a piece that you can't ever really take back no matter how badly you want to. For Brian and me in particular, though he'd sooner die than ever admit it, it was about love, or at least the physical manifestation of it.

The first time that Ethan and I had sex, he hadn't automatically assumed the dominant role. There had been a moment of pause, of hesitation and indecision, where it could have gone either way. He would have let me top him if I'd wanted to. I often wonder, when I remember the look on his face when I deferred, if he wouldn't have rather I did. But I couldn't. I hadn't thrown away everything for a casual fuck. It clearly hadn't mean anything with Brian, but I'd thrown it away for love and I was damned if I was going to give it anything less than all that I had left.

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**A/N: I do not own QAF.**

**I told you that I'd fallen and couldn't get out.**

**Let me know what you think!  
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